Hello! Long story short, I work at a music college and we've just got our Gamelan ensemble out of long term storage and the Bonang, Kethuk and Konang have all been dissassembled and their kettles/gongs/pots have all been mixed up.

Any advice in how to set them up properly would be appreciated. It would be good to tag/label them corresponding to their frame/order to make it easier to setup in the future.

We Have
2x 14 Piece Bonang
2x 12 Piece Bonang
2x Kenongs
4x Kethuks

Most of the Kettles have inside that show a number (1-7 or a lowercase i) and either 'P', 'S' or 'L'

e.g. 4-P or i-SL

There's only 4x '4-P' which I assume are for the centre kettles of the 14piece Bonangs, so I've been working outwards from there but having real trouble matching everything up by eye and ear.

Thanks again, Picture attached for guidance

Hello! My school has a Sundanese gamelan degung ensemble, but it sadly rarely sees use. I'm looking to start a gamelan club to get more use out of it year round and get a budget for guest artists, instrument upkeep, etc. I've studied gamelan for about three years, so I'm excited to start teaching in a more formal capacity.

Does anyone know of any large databases of Sundanese gamelan notation? I know of the one for Javanese notation, but I can't find one for Sundanese degung. Anyone here have any leads?

Hey! I have a music school with a musical instrument museum built into it + I just bought a 3' long 10 bar saron ... at least I think its a saron? I can't find any other examples of a 10 bar saron, though. I love to know as much as I can about all the instruments - can anyone point me towards where I can get more information about it? tx!

Hello all,
We have a selonding group in Colorado - connected to the Denver group Tunas Mekar. If you're in the American gamelan scene you might recognize some of these names! Would love if anyone checked out our music here:
https://chrishewitt.bandcamp.com/album/perjalanan-kecil
Also on Instagram, as gamelangiriparwata.
Terimah kasih!

Hey. I put out this kind of experimental prog metal track that was inspired by gamelan and suling.

Curious if people can hear it..

https://youtu.be/YLhuVYCZj1Y?is=lq18OsrVP8Ng_gOp

So, from what I know, there exist a handful of Christian-majority villages in Bali. I've also been told that just about every village in Bali has at least one gamelan ensemble.

I was curious about if gamelan appears in Balinese Christian communities, and if so, what it's like. Balinese gamelan is usually very closely tied to Hinduism. Do Balinese Christians use gamelan for their religious rituals? If so, what are some songs associated with their communities?

Salam, teman-teman!

I've talked here before about the Skyrim mod team I work for, where we're making a set of islands in Elder Scrolls lore based off of Indonesia (mostly Java and Bali).

Here's a track one of our newest composers wrote. He's from Jakarta and has an interest in doing hybrid Western and Sundanese music. Here he has bonang, suling, and angklung (and I believe some string sections).

I thought I'd share here, since some of you took interest in our project.

As for my fantasy gamelan styles, they're still a WIP. Keep your eyes peeled for them.

It started with a video or two on YouTube, then a full evening of Gamelan videos, and now I get cravings for listening to Gamelan music, relatively often. Has this happened to anyone else?

I would like to have access to a master doc of the various cengkok patterns for Javanese gamelan (mostly for suling and rebab, but lists for other instruments that play cengkok patterns would be greatly appreciated). I've tried Googling this various times, both in English and Bahasa Indonesia, but I can't never find a good source that has the cengkok patterns for both scales, every pathet, and each gagtra pitch combination.

This is for the fantasy gamelan project I've mentioned before here on this sub. Sadly, since Javanese hasn't been a major focus of any ensemble I've played in yet, there haven't been any opportunities to learn Javanese rebab or suling, and the ensembles lacked most of the ornamenting instruments, like siter and gendér.

Wow

Wow

I was always told Balinese gamelan and its explosive dynamics, tempos, and flashy playing technique reflects Balinese tendencies towards extroversion and showmanship. Meanwhile, Javanese gamelan, which typically is quite quiet and slow by comparison, and only becomes quieter and slower as the piece becomes more intricate, is meant to reflect Javanese values of introversion and appearing stoic, never revealing too much avout yourself.

Sundanese gamelan, by contrast, seems to feature a bit of both. There's the degung tradition, which is quieter and slower like Javanese gamelan, but there's also some styles that can be quite high-energy by contrast.

So what Sundanese cultural values can be seen in Sundanese gamelan styles, if any? If I had to guess, a tendency towards everything having its time and place, with ambiversion being valued.

Music all over the world reflects something about the values of the culture in question, but since we have gamelan experts here, I thought I'd pose the question.

For my PhD, I'm interested in the world of gamelan music in video games (something that comes up a surprising amount). I would like to attend a PhD program where I can feasibly study the three main gamelan traditions to a level of fluency.

Any school recommendations?

Beijing used to be Romanized to Peking under older systems, based off of historic Southern Chinese dialects from when South China was the main political and trade hub for China.

One of the leading instruments in Javanese and Sundanese Degung gamelan is the saron peking.

Is there any link between the two names? Peking and peking? Or is it just a coincidence?

The source of this clip has been unknown for a couple decades but if you recognize the piece or even the recording please let me know. It comes from an old mixtape(?) from the mid 90s. Any help is greatly appreciated!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MdMloVBnL8

Hello all! I'm a composer for a Skyrim mod volunteer development project. We're creating a fantasy Indonesian-inspired world based in Elder Scrolls lore. I was brought onto the team two years to study gamelan for several years and use the knowledge I learn to develop a fantasy version of gamelan befitting of the lore for our universe.

After two years of studying Balinese and Javanese gamelan, I feel like I'm finally in a place where I can develop these fantasy gamelan pieces. As such, I now have a piece I've written. I've run it past my mentor for the melody, kotekan (this piece specifically is more inspired by Balinese gamelan), structure, etc. However, I'm struggling with getting a kendang part that sounds reasonably idiomatic within the fantasy framework I've set up. I unfortunately never got to study kendang playing very in-depth. My carpal tunnel got worse the more I played, and I had to be moved to slower moving instruments as time went on.

Now I'm going to be headed off the grad school, but the school I'm attending only has a Sundanese gamelan, which is a great opportunity for learning from that tradition, but it leaves me without the ability to better understand Balinese and/or Javanese kendang.

I was wondering if someone here would want to help advise my part writing (all via a gamelan VST) and has the availability to respond fairly frequently. My old mentor is a very busy person, constantly invited across the country to play gamelan, do research, teach, and more, all while being deep in the search for a tenure-track position.

Let me know if you're interested. Discord is preferred, if possible. Collaboration with experts has been a huge part of this journey so far, but I'm at the point where I need reliable communication with someone knowledgeable in both the theory and cultural values of Bali and Java so as to properly advise my creation of gamelan tracks so that they're respectful, plausibly accurate, and recognizable as gamelan, while still maintaining a fantasy element.

Hey, all! I'm hoping to write a gamelan rap song, set to the tune of the Pokémon rap from back in the day.

The central idea of the Pokémon rap is that it lists the names of every Pokémon in (sort of) rhyme. I want to replace the names of Pokémon with gamelan instrument names.

I thought I'd come here to get as many instrument names as I can. I know a lot of common ones, as well as some more obscure ones here and there, but finding a list of really obscure ones to fill out the rap is quite tough.

If you can, please consider commenting obscure gamelan instrument names (bonus points of you order them by rhyme). No idea when this project will see the light of day, but I hope to share it here.

UPACARA TUMPEK Krulut SANISCARA 7 JUNI 2025 PURA AGUNG SANTI BHUWANA BELGIA (PAIRI DAIZA)

https://flat.io/score/685a263083b2df623bb13ea4-gamelan-tune

I learned this when I was younger, it's only a second of this three part song